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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

The smartphone is the most essential device in the world.

Two companies have more control than entire governments. They tax everything and control what can be done in the mobile space.

Mobile means taking photos, dating, ordering dinner at a restaurant, navigating, buying at the store, presenting an officer your state ID, looking for a new home, reading the news, scheduling meetings, answering calls from loved ones, ... E V E R Y T H I N G.

The uses of mobile have outgrown these two companies, and it's time the control these two companies have is rescinded by worldwide regulators.

First class web installs must be supported, and moreover they cannot come with a scare wall. Furthermore, Apple and Google shouldn't be allowed to control which technologies can be used (JIT, runtimes, browsers, dynamic apps), which payments/login rails can be used, etc.

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> dating, ordering dinner at a restaurant, buying at the store

Paraphrase: Apple/Google provide access to the internet therefore they 100% control access. You might use your argument for a mall or a credit card!

Not saying that Google/Apple are not monopolies especially in payments as you point out: I'm just suggesting to avoid using strawman examples that don't support your thesis!

you're so close. They're all oligopolies that have sliced up every aspect of American life for profit.

theres no more free market, just competing jails.

You don't need a smartphone to do any of the things you listed, though, which kind of derails this whole argument.

Go without your iPhone for a year and you might change your tune.

These companies have a hand in everything you do and touch. And they tax any business that wants to do business with you via your phone.

normal people don't care about web apps or app stores. they care that they can tap-to-pay securely and effortlessly, and that there are pretty background photos for contacts. they care about mostly first party apps and tiktok and web browsing, and no they don't care about chrome or firefox or safari.

developers need to realise most of the world just wants a phone that works, and outside of nerds, they don't give a crap about who pays what to whom.

personally, as an engineer, i don't want any third party doing OS-level tampering or opening up secure areas of the hardware, nor do i want random power-hungry runtimes and code being ran. i want my phone to work the way it was sold to me, and i don't want meta or some leet haxxor's apps or app stores

You can have it your way. Nobody is forcing the alternative on you. Unfortunatly, the masses of people that do not want it that way for now can not.

So your argument is that you trust governments more than you trust Apple, Google, and smartphone manufacturers?

I'm no fan of any of those companies, but that doesn't mean I think they're less trustworthy than governments.

In fact, a big part of the reason smartphones as a platform can be locked down to the extent they are is government regulation of the "phone" part. Regulations intended to prevent a bad actor from using a phone or similar device to blast everyone else within range off the air by transmitting at high power (or other similar nefarious things) have had the actual effect of making entire phone platforms into jails. What should have happened is that the "phone" part that controls things like transmit power should have been separated from the "computer-like device" part, so that the latter could be open, at least to the extent that PCs are. But that didn't happen, because government regulation is a very poor tool.

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